


Close Quarters

by Dr_TJ_Eckleburg



Category: Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 08:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4660173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg/pseuds/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It started when someone made the very simple decision to remove one of the cots from the tent shared by Doctors Cain and West." Circumstances push Herbert and Dan even closer to each other than they already are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Quarters

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks goes to Backwards-Blackbird on Tumblr for editing this not once, but twice for me!

It started when someone made the very simple decision to remove one of the cots from the tent shared by Doctors Cain and West. Herbert didn’t spend much time sleeping, anyway. When he did sleep, it wasn’t for long and rarely in a bed. Bitter though he was, he allowed Dan the remaining cot.

No more than three evenings later, the cacophony of explosions in the night sky found Herbert sitting on the edge of the cot, his hand lingering close to Dan’s. He spoke deliberately of the glandular processes of lizards, repeating himself, trying to block out the horrendous commotion outside.

Dan laid back down and surrendered to the fact that he wasn’t getting his usual hour and a half of sleep that night. He could do nothing but listen. His partner often needed nothing more than an audience, someone only to _oooh_ and _ahh_ at the appropriate times, and in some dream-like way it seemed they were the only souls for miles around. It wasn’t the topic that held Dan, but the fervor in Herbert’s words. It was his passion that would not allow Dan to turn a deaf ear or to look away.

Eerie quiet permeated the camp the following day so that the sound of Herbert dropping a beaker was almost deafening. 

“Are you all right?”

“What do you mean?” Herbert spat. “Of course I’m all right.” The sallow circles under his eyes told a different story. “My hand slipped.”

Dan rolled his eyes and carefully brushed broken pieces of glass into a bucket. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, Herbert: you look like hell.”

He shot Dan a withering glare. “I’m sorry my appearance does not meet your standards this morning.”

“You’re sick.”

“I am not sick,” he insisted venomously and stalked out of the tent, hoping—Dan was certain—that he couldn’t hear him vomiting on the ground just outside a moment later.

Herbert pored over his notes and paced through the tent most of the day, which was in Dan’s educated opinion the last thing someone who kept shivering in 100 degree weather should do. He was something like a wounded animal, hesitant to let Dan see him weak.

That is, until dusk was upon them and Dr. Cain found himself in their single cot, trying desperately to make up for lost sleep the night before. Herbert charged up to him, flipped over a small barrel and sat atop it. His eyes blazed feverishly behind his glasses like two coals, and his skin was ashen. Still, he furrowed his brow. “In regard to the lizards…” he said.

Dan blinked and propped himself up in bed. “What about them?”

“The Cuzco iguanas.”

“... Yes.”

“I would like to take several home with us. Now, I’m not looking to have an entire lab filled with lizards, but they will be paramount in continuing our research. Maybe three.” He eagerly leaned forward, hands clasped. 

“I don’t think we’re heading back to the States any time soon.”

“Ah, but when we do… You see, there’s a sac in the iguana that—” 

“Yeah, we went over that part a couple times last night.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Have you taken anything?”

Herbert looked almost hurt. “Dan, I haven’t used the reagent for my own... personal purposes since before we left Arkham.”

“No, dammit, Herbert. I mean, medicine.” He reached out and pressed a hand to his forehead. Herbert flinched. “You clearly have a fever, and you look about as bad as one of our experiments.”

His jaw clenched, and he cleared his throat. “I’m fine.” He glanced to the ground in what looked a lot like shame. “Yes, I’ve taken medicine, Daniel. I’m not an idiot.”

Dan pushed himself into a sitting position. “For a scientific genius, yes, you can be quite the idiot sometimes.” He offered a smile, but Herbert only narrowed his eyes. “Listen, we’re in 100 degree heat in the jungle with every threat imaginable right outside our door. Getting sick is risky, and I don’t want to end up re-animating you.”

“You won’t. I can’t die.”

Dan scoffed, though he wasn’t entirely sure Herbert was lying. “... Really.”

“No, we have too much to accomplish.”

Dan laughed, but his partner was entirely serious, sickly hazel eyes still gleaming in the lamplight of their makeshift bedroom, a tiny corner of the tent sectioned off from the rest of the world. “Why do you do this?” he asked softly. “You’re not a machine. We have enough evidence and experiments under our belts to amaze the world already.”

“Daniel. We have not yet _conquered_ Death. We’ve wounded him, yes. But we can’t enjoy the spoils of our victory until we’ve actually won.” He reeled briefly, placing a ginger hand to his forehead. “There is no greater foe than this, one that mankind has never been able to defeat. Until now.” 

He pitched forward, and Dan reached out and gripped him by the shoulder. “Here. You need the bed more than I do.”

“I’m fine.”

“Not by any stretch of the imagination, Herbert.”

Dan moved to pull his partner into the cot, but before he could extricate himself, he was pulled downward again by the lapels. There they lay, face to face, and Herbert speaking of everything. He looked so intently into Dan’s eyes, he could’ve bore a hole through to the back of his skull as he babbled of fresh specimens and their old foe Death. He gripped Dan, physically and mentally, holding him there. It felt as though he would always hold him there.

Eventually Herbert dozed off, his glasses at a haphazard angle, hanging from his face. Still, Dan did not remove himself from the cot. It felt like ages since he had such close contact with another human being. His breathing was steady, somehow comforting, and his body was so warm against Dan’s. They fit together remarkably well.

For Christ’s sake, he felt like a pervert thinking such things when he was sick.

But Herbert was some reminder that Dan was still living. These days, he didn’t always feel like he was. Through days of meatball surgery and nights of the reanimated dead, countless nightmares and haunting memories, he sometimes had to remind himself that the clock was still ticking. He was not caught in some frightening dream. This was life now.

He carefully wrapped an arm around Herbert’s slim waist and buried his face in his hair, knowing that—sick or not—his companion would murder him for it if he were conscious. 

\--

Herbert recovered from his short illness just in time to face three days of non-stop wounded pouring into their tent. The constant screams outside, the blood permeating every surface was enough to disturb even the immovable Dr. West. Many of the bodies were mutilated, barely clinging to life even as they arrived. They were unfit to live, let alone to be re-animated.

It neared the end of the third day when there was finally a break in the monstrous procession in and out of their tent, and they stared, drained, at the latest dead man on the operating table before them. He was oddly unscathed, and Dan supposed in retrospect it was his cool, calm death mask face and untouched body that drove the restless Herbert to reach for the reagent.

But the ungodly, hellish shriek the wretch let out upon reanimation was enough to send him reaching wildly for his pistol.

Later that evening, sprawled on their cot, Dan once again couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or awake. He wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Nothing but mangled bodies and wasted lives filled his head. Even with dozens of soldiers and volunteers outside, he felt infinitely alone…

...until Herbert sat silently on the edge of the bed, staring blankly into the darkness. He heaved a heavy sigh and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. There were tiny cracks from stress in his facade after such a horrific marathon, but Dan knew he was the only one who could see them and when daylight came around again, those cracks would be gone.

And for that, he envied Herbert.

He wordlessly laid down beside Dan, as though there were some unspoken rule now that said they were always to share their sole cot. He muttered lowly, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust… so many wasted bodies… _opportunities…_ ”

He let his hand drop to cover Dan’s.

“What do you expect, Herbert? It’s a war,” he said in a pitiful attempt at humor to help conceal some of his own cracks.

“It’s demoralizing.”

“War often is,” Dan said weakly and rolled on his side to face his partner. He felt the same surge as before at simply having him so near. He was someone to hold on to, warm, breathing—living. “Out here it’s just another day. But I guess we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”

“We do, I’m afraid. More of this and not a suitable specimen in sight.” Herbert glanced to Dan as the latter carefully brushed his thumb along his jaw. “You should sleep.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re overwhelmed. I could see it in you all day. Sleep,” Herbert insisted bluntly.

He didn’t flinch as Dan traced his finger over Herbert’s lips. In the darkness, he seemed some sort of masterpiece, warm and whole and alive. Dan said, “They didn’t… feel like humans anymore. Just hopeless piles of flesh we couldn’t give proper attention, the attention they deserved.”

“Most human beings are nothing but hopeless piles of flesh, as you say,” Herbert said.

“Is that how you do this? By thinking that way?”

“ _Sleep_ , Dan—”

“If that’s how you feel, why do you do this work?”

Herbert clenched his jaw and drew a deep breath through his nose before answering, “So that I… so that _we_ can never consider ourselves hopeless piles of flesh, wallowing in self-pity and inadequacy.”

Dan wasn’t entirely sure the phrase didn’t accurately describe his current state, but he remained silent, endeavoring to brush his fingers over Herbert’s throat and collarbone, slipping underneath the shirt he’d worn for the last three days. Herbert was hesitant but gave a sort of pleasant hum as Dan pressed his forehead to his.

It was an attempted kiss that caused Herbert to pull back. “Dan,” he said sternly.

“Please.”

“Nothing good can come of this. It would jeopardize our work.”

“Herbert, I know that. I’m sorry but… Look, there are times I feel like I’m falling apart out here,” he insisted. “I feel like I’m going out of my mind. I just need something to hold on to.”

“And you want this, do you? Is this some base attempt to prove to yourself that you’re still alive?”

Dan sighed and finally broke eye contact to look into the darkness surrounding them. “It’s something.”

“Isn’t it easier and just as effective for you to find some airheaded bimbo to satisfy you?”

No airheaded bimbo had seen all that Dan had seen. He looked back to Herbert and hoped the vague traces of shame he felt didn’t color his gaze in any way. “No. That’s not who I need.”

Need. Herbert seemed to settle into the word, reaching to trace the outline of Dan’s face. He had a sharp eye to examine each of his features. To be desperately needed was something that not only appeared to please Dr. West, but conjured some spark of curiosity in his eyes. Troubling, it was not a phenomenon foreign to Dan, for Herbert often looked at other men in a similar way… though they were usually dead.

But Dan knew to be seen through the same lens through which Herbert West saw his work was the highest compliment he could be paid.

“I don’t wish to make a bad habit of this,” Herbert said softly, dragging a finger downward to settle upon his collarbone. Dan brought their mouths together in a brief but pleasant kiss. Herbert piqued his eyebrows but did not recoil. “Though I do understand your needs.”

The night would take them on an intricate exploration of each other, of every inch of their bodies while the world fell to pieces beyond their tent. Herbert was surprisingly warm and receptive to Dan, but Dr. Cain could not shake the feeling that this was all an experiment, nothing but an extension of their horrific work. Herbert was appeasing him, keeping him there. However, he didn’t mind it, particularly not as he found himself entirely tangled in Dr. West, proudly achieving something he didn’t think was possible: rendering the self-centered scientist speechless, breathless in his grasp.

\--

As quickly as their cot had disappeared, it returned one afternoon. It had been needed elsewhere, a Peruvian medic tried desperately to convey. He apologized no less than three times and left.

“I think we managed quite well without it,” Herbert muttered.

Dan nodded. “I’m sure there’s someone who needs it more. It’d be selfish to keep it here.”

“Always the compassionate soul, Dr. Cain.”

In the end, the cot remained in their tent, purely for the purposes of keeping up appearances and occasionally offering another surface on which to place cadavers and—less frequently—Cuzco iguanas. For the purposes of sleeping and… relieving tension, as Herbert so eloquently described their actions, one cot was _perfectly_ adequate.


End file.
